The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
For printing device manufacturers (or vendors who service and support printing devices), many different billing models are used to generate revenue from their respective printing devices. At the “low-end” (e.g., home user or desktop printer user), one billing model focuses on the sale of the consumables (e.g., toner, ink, fusers, drums, cleaners) for the device as the primary mode of revenue generation. Another billing model at the low-end focuses on offering extended warranties in return for service and support.
In the professional printing environment (i.e., the “high-end”), more responsive service and support is often needed. Thus, support plans and billing models may focus on both consumable usage as well as service and support.
One goal of a printing device manufacturer (hereinafter referred to as a “print vendor”) is to charge customers for the “wear and tear” of a printing device, referred to hereinafter as “machine usage.” One possible measure of machine usage is consumable usage. However, consumable usage tends to be highly unpredictable for a print vendor because consumable usage can vary considerably from one type of printed document (e.g., a book) to another type of printed document (e.g., a photograph).
Another rough measure of machine usage is the number of sheets that are fed through the printing device. Thus, customers may be charged for the number of sheets that are required for printing documents. The charge for a single printed sheet is known as a “click charge.”
Most printing devices have some type of built in “page counter,” which is also referred to as a “billing meter” or a “click counter.” A page counter tracks the number of sheets that are printed. A printing device may have a different page counter for each sheet size and for color prints. For example, a click charge for each monochrome letter size sheet costs the customer $0.05, whereas a click charge for each color letter size sheet costs the customer $0.085. One page counter might track how many monochrome letter size sheets were printed while another page counter might track how many color letter size sheets were printed. At regular intervals, a print vendor might read the various page counters on a printing device and bill the customer for the usage of the printing device based on the each page counter and the click charge associated with each page counter. Often, a monthly fee is charged in addition to the overall click charge.
Because page counters are a rough measure of machine usage, many printing devices have recommended service actions at specific page counter values. For example, general maintenance might be performed at 60,000 prints. From a customer's perspective, billing based on page counters is more reliable than billing based solely on consumable usage because the cost of a printed sheet is well defined. If a customer were required to buy consumables separately, then the cost per sheet could vary considerably from one type of printed document to another because the amount of consumables used (e.g., toner, ink) can vary from one type of printed document to another. For example, printing photographs typically requires more consumables than a typical printed page of a manual. Thus, in the professional digital printing market, billing models that have attempted to account for consumable usage have generally been unsuccessful, which is most likely due to the variable and unpredictable cost for the professional printer.
While not completely standardized, the page counter billing model has an advantage to the customer in that the billing model allows the customer to compare costs between vendors' products. For example, it might cost $0.05 to print a page on a printing device from vendor X, whereas it might cost $0.08 to print the same size page on a printing device from vendor Y.
One disadvantage of the page counter billing model is that the model is based on sheet size. Thus, the cost of printing a particular document can vary significantly based on the sheet size used. For example, color business cards printed on letter-sized sheets would have a different cost than the same color business cards printed on a 12×18 sized sheet. In many cases, this billing model drives the professional printer to use larger sheet sizes and imposition to print multi-up documents in order to lower the cost of the printed document, which increases labor costs. “Imposition” refers to the printing of multiple documents on a single sheet in a particular order so that the multiple documents come out in the correct sequence when the sheet is cut and folded. Encouraging a professional printer to use larger sheet sizes and imposition also makes computing the costs of printing documents more complex since different sheet sizes may be used.